Pass it on: Lydian b7

Gary Peacock introduced me to the “tendency of tones” and tritone resolutions based on the physics of the overtone series. This sounds too much like science, right? Well, stay with me a minute and then just play it and listen. The Lydian mode is the most stable mode to come from a major scale structure because the tones are consonant with the chord (see previous post). This happens partially because the #4 (#11) shows up before the natural one in the overtone series.

The b7 also appears lower in the overtone series than the natural 7, so if we add that to the Lydian mode on C we get:

The mode is more stable than Mixolydian and the triad at the top is still a D major, leading me to the same kind of musical experiments here as with Lydian (only this time thinking dominant 7th chord).

I will quote Gary here: “Learn it and forget it!” Music as an applied science… happy playing!